A Flood of Climate Change Hyperbole.
When climate change activists claimed floods in Valencia were due to global warming the mainstream media and political elites enthusiastically agreed. Now the claim is unravelling.
The reaction to devastating floods in Valencia last year crystallised everything that’s wrong about the climate change lobby. Its emotional guilt-tripping. Its rush to judgement. Above all its refusal to grapple with practical realities. If this sounds eerily familiar there’s another way in which the response resembled the trans debate. The compulsory groupthink.
In the immediate aftermath of the flood, hyperbolic claims by activists were amplified by politicians and echoed by the media. Yet, as we’re about to discover, these claims were deliberately framed to mislead the public about the significance of the disaster. And lend support to policies which could prove as dangerous as climate change itself.
I say all this despite the fact I agree climate change is happening. The planet is almost certainly getting warmer. Though as a Glaswegian you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t feel quite as terrified by this prospect as I probably should.
The sixty trillion dollar question is….how urgently and dramatically should we try to prevent further climate change. If we can. Equally important, how can we avoid our attempts to limit global warming inflicting serious and unnecessary damage on the global economy upon which our jobs, our lifestyles and ….our lives increasingly depend.
To help answer these questions I’m going to revisit the extraordinary events that occurred in Valencia late last year; examining them in the kind of forensic detail I haven’t seen anyone do anywhere else.
This has been the most difficult post I’ve written so far. It certainly took more time than any other. But I knew if I was going to write about climate change I’d have to make sure my evidence was copper-bottomed. I hope you agree it is…. and that this article provides a fascinating insight into the debate about the best way to respond to global warming. I don’t have an axe to grind. My training as a science journalist means I don’t just like to ….get to the truth. I know how to find it.
If you are a paid subscriber my heartfelt thanks. It’s only with paid subscriptions I’m able to do these deep dives that so few journalists are willing to do. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber I’d be really grateful if you would consider becoming one.
Our story begins on the morning of the 29th of October 2024. Above a mountain range of craggy peaks in south-eastern Spain rain is starting to fall. Lots of it. Unbeknownst to the citizens of Valencia 200 miles away….a torrent of water will soon be rolling towards them. At the height of the subsequent flood a volume of water equivalent to that of Niagara Falls will bulldoze through their elegant metropolis. Every second.
Who or what was to blame?
Before the floodwaters had receded environmentalists and the media had a catch-call answer. It was climate change. As for the flood….they were united. It was a warning. What happened to Valencia…“was beyond imagination” and “very soon ….could become the norm”, opined Prospect magazine as it caught the general mood.
“Climate change kills- it has done so in Valencia”, said the Spanish Prime Minister when he addressed COP29, two weeks later.
Look a little deeper though and the facts reveal a rather different picture. One markedly at odds with many of the central claims made by the climate change lobby.
This is a story of scientific fraud, criminally incompetent politicians and a media that refuses to dig beneath the surface of …a press release.